Hospital bed availability drops in southwest IL as state nears 1 million COVID-19 cases
About 89% of the metro-east’s staffed hospital beds are occupied, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.
As of Wednesday, 11.2% of the metro-east’s staffed hospital beds were available for patient use, down from 13.7% on Tuesday, according to state health department data. Additionally, 20.9% of the region’s intensive care unit beds were available Wednesday, down from 23.5% on Tuesday.
Wednesday marked the ninth-consecutive day the region’s hospital bed availability has been under the state-set threshold of 20%, which plays a part in determining whether COVID-19 restrictions need to be tightened or relaxed. Currently, the entire state is in Tier 3 mitigations.
For Tier 3 mitigation metrics to be relaxed or to move to Tier 2, the region must experience a seven-day rolling average positivity rate of less than 12% for three consecutive days while also seeing 20% available intensive care unit and medical/surgical bed availability for three consecutive days.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Wednesday the state will ease Tier 3 restrictions starting Jan. 15 for those regions that meet the state threshholds.
Region 4’s rolling seven-day average positivity rate was 13.3% on Wednesday, up from 13% on Tuesday. Additionally, the region reported a daily positivity rate of 15.1% on Wednesday, up from 12.6% on Tuesday.
The new testing positivity rate and hospital and ICU bed availability is based on data recorded as of Jan. 5. A region’s positivity rate is its percentage of positive COVID-19 tests versus the number of tests taken over a seven-day period.
Tier 3 restrictions went into place statewide on Friday, Nov. 20. The third tier tightens restrictions on indoor dining, bars and social gatherings while adding restrictions to casinos, retailers, video gaming and museums.
Officials in the metro-east have continuously warned about the possibility of the region running low on hospital and ICU beds, prompting some area hospitals to temporarily cease elective surgeries. Officials also worry a spike of new COVID-19 cases could be on the way due to Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations.
On Monday, St. Clair County Board Chairman Mark Kern said the effect of those celebrations should start to show up in the coming weeks.
The state classifies the metro-east as Region 4, which covers seven counties: St. Clair, Madison, Monroe, Bond, Washington, Clinton and Randolph. County-by-county data is available on the state health department’s website.
State of Illinois announces new cases, deaths
Meanwhile, the state of Illinois announced 7,569 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday, bringing the total to 999,288. The state health department also announced 139 additional deaths to bring the total to 17,096 since the pandemic began.
Also within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 80,974 new tests have been administered for a total of 13,698,428.
As of Tuesday, when the latest data was available, 3,928 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 812 patients were in the ICU and 451 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total tests from Dec. 30-Jan. 5 is 8.4%.
This story was originally published January 6, 2021 at 12:49 PM.